Thank you, Carl Franke, for your de-conversion story!

Carl’s tale is as follows and is also posted on the De-Conversion Story page. Later, there’s a little extra. Stay tuned.

“…I too had my coming to terms with my lack of belief. My parents didn’t raise me religious, in fact they didn’t even speak about it at all. When I broached the subject, they quite simply didn’t say anything. That may sound weird, but that’s how my parents were.

“I was surrounded by religion. I heard it from all over. I had a friend who’s house I’d stay over on Saturday which included a Sunday morning visit to the local Baptist church. Which btw, was nothing but my friend and I making fart noises and trying not to laugh. When I did try to listen to the preacher, I didn’t really understand anything he was talking about anyways.

“Funny, my biggest issues were not with my parents or even my friends for the most part. It was with everyone else. As someone who didn’t understand, I was offending a lot of people with my curiosity. Asking questions isn’t very socially acceptable. I still find that to be true with adults, even more so. My lack of faith seems to be an acceptable topic, but most theists recoil and get offended when I ask about their faith. Most anyways, some really good people I’ve met in my life are more than happy to discuss it. But they are the minority. But that’s human nature, not religion.

“It just never made sense to me. I didn’t have the crazy bible stories to push me away. It just seemed weird that for god to be all great, how come I never knew it? And to say that I gotta find Jesus, well, I was very quiet and open minded and I never ‘found’ him. I certainly wasn’t going to lie to myself, that’s just stupid. I was sitting in an empty room, by myself. No god, no Jesus. Just me an my Atheism.

“It wasn’t a big realization that I came to one day. It was a lot of trial and error. I just never bought into it.”